The invention relates generally to network-based computer systems and, more particularly but not by way of limitation, to the automatic detection of bandwidth between computer systems.
As computer system technology and network capacity or bandwidth have improved, communication applications such as multimedia, video and audio conferencing have gained increased use. A significant aspect of these applications is the bandwidth used by the systems (i.e., endpoints) sending and receiving multimedia signals (i.e., video and/or audio and/or data signals) as part of the applications' run-time environment. In general, the greater the bandwidth between two endpoints the better the communications application's performance. Accordingly, it is important from a performance point-of-view to accurately determine the bandwidth between communicating endpoints—a value that is often asymmetric between communicating endpoints. That is, the bandwidth from a first endpoint to a second endpoint may be different from the bandwidth from the second endpoint to the first endpoint. For example, an endpoint coupled to a network via a digital subscriber line (“DSL”) typically has a lower transmission bandwidth than a receiving bandwidth.
Prior art systems or applications typically rely on default bandwidth settings and/or query the user at application start-up to identify the bandwidth their local system or endpoint can accommodate. As an initial problem, most users do not know the bandwidth associated with their endpoint system. A second problem is that even if the local bandwidth is “known,” its value is only the maximum specified or “ideal” value (e.g., 10 megabits/second, “Mbps”) and does not reflect the state of the communications network between the communication endpoints at the time of the communications. Thus, it would be beneficial to provide a mechanism to automatically detect the actual bandwidth between communicating endpoints.